And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale

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About “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

The first and most famous hit single of the early progressive rock group Procol Harum

and found on the album with the same name.

The song was written in 1967, before the Summer of Love and became of its anthems.

Procol Harum – named after a Burmese cat belonging to a friend of the group’s manager. It is believed to mean “Beyond these far off things” in (misspelled) Latin.

Keith Reid, who wrote the lyrics, said about the song (from songfacts):

It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story. It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it….I feel with songs that you’re given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, ‘Whiter Shade of Pale,’ and I thought, There’s a song here. And it’s making up the puzzle that fits the piece you’ve got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into.

Who and what was the miller?

See the annotation in the second verse.

Words to the bridge

The “bridge” is instrumental!

where do the words
"and the minnow tore his (her?) appear and to what do they?